TOWER GROVE — A year has passed but the conversation remains strikingly similar.

About 12 months ago, the Bird Land Community Top 30 reached No. 19 in its poll, and the discussion hinged around two righthanded starters: the recently drafted Lance Lynn and the rising changeup artist P.J. Walters. Lynn edged Walters in the voting for No. 18, and Walters then claimed a win at No. 19. Scroll forward to today and Lynn has surged to…

TOWER GROVE — Now we have encountered a problem with the polling, one not to different from the the quandary facing the St. Louis Cardinals or the one that all prospect ranking lists are bound to encounter when mining the Cardinals’ system for potential.

At some point, it becomes difficult to distinguish one prospect from the other and tricky to rank one first baseman against a reliever ahead of, say, a starting pitcher.

That’s what the Bird…

TOWER GROVE — The numerical bounty (especially when it comes to types of pitches) available at Fan Graphs has made that Web site increasingly valuable when it comes to using and exploring some of the — what’s the phrase we learned yesterday? — nouveau riche’s statistics that are out there.

But Fan Graphs, like so many sites these days, are also in the prospect-ranking business.

Marc Hulet, a writer at Fan Graphs, posted his St. Louis Cardinals…

TOWER GROVE — It seems that St. Louis Cardinals’ first-round pick and shortstop prospect Pete Kozma is often judged for the player he isn’t and never will be as opposed to the player he is or could be.

Kozma is not Rick Porcello. No news there.

Yet, that fact seems to bludgeon Kozma’s chances in prospects polls like this one, the Bird Land Community Top 21. He’s dismissed because of something he had no role in and…

TOWER GROVE — The Bird Land Community Top 21’s top 10 is completed, and we’re just about halfway through the annual ranking of St. Louis Cardinals prospects by readers here at the blog. The overarching lessons of the first 10 are two-fold: Voters have adopted the perceived franchise emphasis on winning now/contributing now and the Cardinals system, as a whole, is significantly diluted, even lacking.

Second baseman Daniel Descalso, who had one of a handful of…

TOWER GROVE — In what probably was the closest vote yet in any Bird Land Community prospect poll, Eduardo Sanchez, the fireballer righthanded reliever, took 52 percent of the vote in the runoff and will be your No. 7 prospect on the Top 21 poll this year. Lance Lynn, the steady starter, will be No. 8. At 4 o’clock St. Louis time on Monday one vote separated the two.

So, I gave the poll another day…

TOWER GROVE — The Arizona Fall League is settling into gear, and while Stephen Strasburg is the headliner out at the annual gathering of some of the better prospects in baseball, the St. Louis Cardinals have sent some noteworthy names out west. A few are making up for lost time. A few are trying to extend their strong seasons. And more than one is trying to find a way onto the organization’s radar.

Several, as you…

TOWER GROVE — It started as a cumbersome, at-times chaotic, count-by-hand poll posted in the Cardinals’ message board here at StlToday.com. Through four years and four attempts to refine the process it has improved to an at-times cumbersome and slightly less chaotic poll based here at Bird Land.

But, hey, we no longer have to count it by hand. Viva technology.

With the St. Louis Cardinals’ season over with the sudden sweep by the Los Angeles Dodgers,…

TOWER GROVE — The St. Louis Cardinals have trailed their opponent 49 times this season entering the ninth inning. And 46 times whoever the Cardinals are facing goes on to win the game. Earlier this season the conclusions were often as quick as they were inevitable.

Three times — three times in 49 — the Cardinals have rallied to win.

All three have been since Matt Holliday arrived.

The Cardinals concluded a lengthy and wet day at the…

DOWNTOWN — Comfortable with the depth and swift-moving current of players in their system, the St. Louis Cardinals appear to be using the 2009 draft as a chance to take some risky picks with perceived upside.

The Cardinals concluded Day 1 of the first-year player draft with two picks that don’t fit the profile the club has carved out in recent years for most of their picks — sturdy, college-seasoned, solid statistics players. With the 67th…